Course Overview

When you take this course, be prepared to animate! The only way we learn is to practice our craft. Henrique will take you through 3 different shots and have you create your own. We're going to discuss solid planning, blocking, refining and coloring for each shot we create. Learn Henrique's entire process and point of view on creating high quality 2d animations.

Assignments

We will complete three shots over the course of 6 weeks. The first two weeks will be an FX animation (fluid shape) to establish our process. The middle two weeks will focus on a ball character. The final two weeks will focus on a character action, again revealing the best practices for creating traditional animation.

Weeks 1 & 2

We will start by planning our shot, using both Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose techniques. We can use charts to help with Timing and Spacing and guides to help us create smooth Arcs. We will also talk about Easing in and Easing out and how to approach Mass and Volume when animating Squash and Stretch.

Once we get to a good rough pass, with Keyframes, Breakdowns and Inbetweens, it's time to clean up the shot and get it into it's final state. We will work on cleaning-up our shapes, coloring and adding details such as shadows and highlights.

Weeks 3 & 4

The next two classes are planned to be a bridge between the Shape assignment and the coming Character assignment. We will use a simple Bouncing Head to understand and practice principles like Anticipation and Settle, as well as focusing more on the drawing itself, applying concepts that will help you improve your animation, such as construction lines, tridimensional thinking and Solid Drawing.

We will also learn and practice Follow Through and Overlapping Action, combining them with the Wave Principle.

Weeks 5 & 6

In the last two classes, we will expand the principles we saw and practiced in the previous assignments and see how we can apply those to characters. We will talk a lot about Character Design principles that with help with Posing the character the best way possible, achieving Appeal and animation readability. We will also see how to approach arms and legs, using Successive Breaking of Joints.

The idea behind this assignment is to focus on the Mechanics behind the movement, animating a fun action scene where the character moves from side to side. At this point, you will be able to be using all the 12 Principles of Animation to give your character a big range of movements.

Message from Henrique

We will cover lots of technical stuff in these four weeks, but most of all I hope to share my passion for animation and spark the love for frame by frame. We will get to know the process behind it so you can improve your animation abilities and your confidence level with classical animation. I look forward to getting to know you and working with you in this course!” - Henrique Barone